What happens when...

...Kaia is asked to be Mary in the ward nativity pageant?

You get a girl who has her entire outfit planned out for a week beforehand. And she remembers to bring the taxes! She was ready to pull out her money from the green purse to pay the taxes throughout the entire pageant. She was concerned afterwards that no one took them. I love this girl and her thoughtfulness! (And below see a thoughtful Joseph leading Mary in so gently and Asher loving his role as a shepherd.)






What happens when...Leila has her older sister's baby wardrobe at her disposal but all kinds of adorable new clothes have come out in the last 5 years?

I can't help but buy an outfit here and there. This dress is gorgeous in person. It's definitely cuter than anything I own, although I wouldn't be able to find anything like this for me for $9. My mom wants to have pictures taken of our entire family when we're all together for Christmas with everyone wearing black, red, and white.


What happens when...I'm on the phone for 5 minutes with my dad?

My kids construct a "spider's web" throughout the whole living room/kitchen/dining room. They were so silent as they worked that I had no idea they were so busy. They came in whispering something about a secret they couldn't tell me about but they wanted me to close my eyes and follow them. After seeing it, I retreated to the room to finish my conversation. I did have to draw the line on their fun once I saw Kaia coming out of the bathroom with wet clothes to hang on the spider's web turned clothes line.

Asher's Announcement

Asher has been in one stage of potty training or another for at least a year and a half. I haven't been stressed about it. I've heard that boys take longer than girls to potty train, and it's honestly easier to just have kids in diapers most of the time. Asher has known how to use the toilet for a long time, but he has never been consistent about remembering to use it. As long as he is only in "unders," he remembers to go to the bathroom, but as soon as he gets pants on he forgets that he doesn't have a diaper on and has an accident.

This all seems to have changed 3 days ago. 4 days ago we bought him a new package of Cars underwear. He woke up the next morning wanting to wear Lightning McQueen. I told him he needed to go use the potty before he could put the underwear on.

A couple of minutes later, I walked into the bathroom and Asher made the following announcement: "I went pee and poop, Mom. I'm potty trained now!"

I wasn't really planning on potty training a week before going on vacation (to visit my family for Christmas in Florida), but I figured we might as well run with it. It's been 3 days now and the only accident he's had was one time when he didn't get unbuttoned in time.

Asher's pretty excited about one thing in particular: "Now I can go to the ball place!" Let me explain - in the past, I've tried to motivate Asher to get potty trained so he could join Kaia in the "ball place" or kids' play area at IKEA. Of course, I myself had dual motives in encouraging him - both to get him potty trained and to look forward to an hour of shopping by myself (now with Leila, but she's relatively easy when it comes to shopping). Asher later added some detail to his statement: "Now I can go to the ball place, and Kaia can go, too, because she's already potty trained. Then we can be friends in there!"

I decided to spare you pictures of Asher in his unders (he likes to wear them backwards so he can see the cool pictures when he looks down although I'm working with him to break that habit :). Instead, I thought I'd share a couple of pictures of the kids dressing up as I was nursing Leila the other day. Kaia had the brilliant idea to dress in Asher's clothes and vice versa. Asher was fair game for a while, but partway through our little photo shoot he started to run away. Kaia yelled after him, "Stop, Ash! You're not going to be delicate anymore!!"



The kids had fun, but it's probably a good thing for Peter's sanity that Asher was Batman by the time he got home. :)